Poems are difficult to silence.

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

One of my favorite writers is Michel de Montaigne. My wife gave me a beautiful 17th-century edition of Montaigne's essays translated by John Florio. That's probably my most precious possession.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

Religion is a completely different thing from the claim that the Earth is six thousand years old. That's just crazy.

The best thing that happened is I kept my promises. I ain't run out on nobody.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

I had no idea 'Big Green Tractor' was going to be as big a hit as it was. You just can't predict those things.

Comedy is not my world. It's difficult for me, but sometimes you just have to go with it and have a good time.

Anger destroys your soul.

Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.

To be courageous , you have to have an army of people holding you.

Challenges are inevitable, Defeat is optional.